shadows settle on the place that you left
by Floodtail- AKA Floody
Summary: ringing in my head, when you broke my chest, and if you're in love, you're the lucky one, because most of us are bitter over someone (and you caused it) laura;carmilla, two-shot
1. I

You wake to the rain spattering on dusty windows.

The room is dark, darker than it has ever been. It takes several heartbeats to clear off the fog of light sleep, and your eyes slide to the window, where a pale silhouette is outlined in silver against the drawn blinds.

Carmilla is looking out on the flooded, silvery land: puddles scattered haphazardly, rain hitting the window and streaking down in clear drops, like tears. The wind is whistling between the panes, tearing along leaves, whirling them so they are thrown into the sky.

"Carm?" You question, and she turns, and her face is full of broken sadness, the likes of which you only saw when—

_Run and hide. _

You swing your legs from the bed and pad over to her, brushing her hair back: she flinches from your touch, and worry shivers through you, cold in your veins, chilling through your heart. You can feel something like rocks start to crumble into your lungs, collapsing the fragile ribcage, in which your heart is fluttering like a trapped bird.

"What's wrong?" Your voice is meek, subservient. She turns her head slowly, shadows sharp on her jaw, and you realize she's been crying: dark tears, blurred with makeup, running down her face, accentuated by her pale skin.

"Carmilla—"

"I have to leave," she chokes out, and her face is broken, so uncertain, and the words hit you in the chest like a gun, one after the other: hard and swift, leaving you dead inside. "We can't— we can't be together like this anymore."

"W-what?" Your voice is barely a breath, small and disbelieving: but you can see the answers swimming in her eyes, the certainty, the unfaltering pain, the agony burning in her slanted gaze.

"You're growing— and you're getting older, and you'll die one day, and I'll live, and I— I can't. I won't—"

"So you're giving up?" Your voice comes out as a shout. "On me? On us?"

Her voice comes out as a sob. _"Laura." _

"Carmilla," You whisper, holding her face.

"I can't. _Laura." _

Your voice is tight and your breath is shuddering in your chest and God, you wonder how long she's been holding this in. "Why?" Your voice is pathetically small.

Pain scrapes her words, her eyes, your heart. "I'm forever." Her chest heaves. "You are not."

"So that doesn't mean we can't try?" Your voice rises in volume, and she flinches. "Was _'I love you'_ not enough?"

"I loved— I love you." Her voice is strangled and rasping with tears, clogged, broken. "I will always love you, forever, until the world has ended and every star has burnt out, and even after then, I will still love you— but it does not change what we can't. I can't."

"You- you _won't_," you choke, and you think that all this has given you is quivering fingers, scarred cheeks, self-doubt, a desperate desire to love and to be loved, more metal in your mouth than you know what to do with.

"I'm sorry, cupcake." Her voice is cracked and choked with sorrow.

_Of course I'm doing it for you. _

You feel something snap inside of you, and the tears finally spill over.

"It's going to be okay." She wipes her thumbs across your cheeks, her eyes forlorn and desolate. "I love you… and I'm sorry that I have to do this." And she kisses you, soft and slow.

It's soft, and sincere, and it feels like saying goodbye.

When you open your eyes, she is gone.

"No," You manage to get out, and then choked, "Carmilla, oh God, _Carmilla…"_ and then tears are coming fast and hard, streaming down your face as you slide down the wall, gripping your hair, tasting on your lips the ashes she left behind, the home she burnt down, the fluttering, broken pieces of your heart sinking to the bottom of your ribcage.

"I love you," you whisper, but she is not there any more to hear you, to listen, to look at you with such holiness, and you are met with a cold, empty silence, with the shadows settling on the place that she left, with a cold tightness gripping your chest, dragging you down, down, down: You can't breathe, and darkness takes you in a cold grip and smothers your lungs.

/ / /

You don't think you've eaten in three days. It can't be healthy.

But you're not hungry. You doubt you ever will be again.

You can feel— distantly, your body is disconnected, or is that your mind? Everything seems scrambled, surreal— hunger clawing your stomach, the tears staining your face, the countless notes Perry has slipped under the door, the pings of your phone. You've locked the door and drawn the blinds. This dorm room was never one for such darkness, but it seems to always be night, now.

You don't think you could stand to see the stars; they are too closely connected with—

You block the thought before it breaks you. But it's too late, a choked sob in the back of your throat heralds a fresh wave of tears, drowning you. She turned you into a cliché love wrecked being; she was your anchor, and now you're spinning out of control with nothing to ground you. It's hard to breathe, it's so hard to breathe, you're suffocating daily.

It's hard to think of her; it's even harder not to— you're in war with your heart, head, and all.

You turn on the videos, later, trying to ease out of it. But you need to see her. Your heart is still calling, even after what she did.

And they do her no justice. No camera could justify her beauty, no words could describe how lovely she is, how stunningly graceful. It's hard to look at her, it's even harder to look away; you're going blind.

Sometimes, you believe not being able to see might be better.

/ / /

You venture outside the dorm, to the fresh air, and it's raining, the fresh water mingling with oceans of tears cresting on your cheeks.

You see the tree where you and Carmilla carved each others names.

You are one and the same, that old willow and you. You stand tall with the scars that life gave you, with the names of lovers carved deep in your limbs, with the past etched in your flesh.

You barely make it inside before you're throwing up.

She is tangible on the air, and you can't get rid of her taste, her smell, her touch. She's a disease, and it's clinical, and you're sick, God, you're so sick.

Little by little, you learn that hearts can still ache after dying.

/ / /

Your brain is tainting your memories: little by little, she is fading, and the tighter you hold on, the faster she slips through your fingers.

Sometimes, you learn, the thing that lays in your bed is much more terrifying than what lurks underneath; you are drowning, and she is the ocean, and you're desperate— God, you're so desperate; she'd laugh at you for that.

You'd give anything to have her near.

/ / /

Tempests are crackling across the sky the next day, but you feel no fear.

Nothing speaks as loud as your heart, and it hurts. It hurts. You are living on an edge, running, spinning, tumbling into the darkness: she got under your skin, and lived in your bloodstream, and someone yanked the cord, and now your breathing is fading.

Scalding hot. Love flowered across your heart; love also died there. It's just a bruise now, a rainbow of shattered feeling blossoming across your skin; you recreate those verses in your head.

The silence is too much.

You can feel the rain clinging to your skin, sliding down your cheeks, cold and icy. It soaks you through, but you're mesmerized, staring at the gray clouds, wondering when you will join them.

You touch your chest, you feel your heartbeat: another reminder.

Because you are so, so mortal. And because of your mortality, she could not stay. It makes you hate your heart— your heart, responsible for all the unrequited love for her. The love that never will fade. The heart that makes you live, the heart that separates you from someone you love with every last drop of blood in you, someone you love so much it hurts— it hurts; there is an icy blade being wedged in your collarbone as you remember she's gone.

That she's not coming back.

It's always been easier not to remember, but when was Carmilla ever easy?

_Right,_ you remember, _she wasn't._

_I am forever. You are not._

You wonder, with a touch of desperation, if living is even something to strive for at this point, because a heavy weight has settled deep in your lungs, and it's not going away. You thread your hands through the twisted grass, clumps breaking apart, and you've separated more than your heart at this point.

Pretending, no matter how you try, won't work. You loved— love— her red, she is gone now, and you can see her in everything.

Even after all this time, she is still there.

"Laura?"

You turn, stumbling, the briefest flicker of hope rising unbidden in your heart. It is snuffed out abruptly when you see LaFontaine, and they must sense your disappointment.

You turn back without a word, letting the rain wash over you, despair rising in your heart. They come to stand beside you, silent.

"You really loved her, huh?"

"It hurts," you croak, and your voice is scratchy from so many days of silence. "It hurts so bad, and she's never coming back…" A wail rises in your throat and you swallow it back, and they lay a warm, solid hand on your shoulder.

"She loved you too," they say softly. "She really did, Laura."

"Then why did she leave?" you choke out, pleading, because the answers are something you'll never have.

They shake their head, ginger hair flat, sparkling with rain as the wind howls around. "I don't know." They sigh deeply, and their eyes are sorrowful. "I just don't know."

"I don't know what to do," you confess. "I— I don't…" You struggle for words. "I just miss her," you whisper, and LaFontaine stays next to you as you exhaust your tears.

/ / /

It's been a month. Your dreams are dark, haunted, and you toss and turn in your sleep, feeling the emptiness beside you pierce like a thorn in your heart. Darkness is always present in your head: ever present, and it won't go away, and sometimes it takes the form of a pale skinned, dark haired girl with alluring obsidian eyes and a fox's grin.

You wake screaming one night, and she is not there to wipe your tears or alleviate your fears, and you have to fight the demons trapping you all by yourself.

She is one of them.

/ / /

But you know in the end; you aren't okay, you'll never be okay.

/ / /

Going outside one day, it is storming; it is dark and it mirrors your thoughts. She changed you— God, she changed you so much, and you're limp, unbreathing.

You can't breathe; you can't breathe, your chest is so heavy, and sucking in every sharp breath— they all catch in your throat, and you're swallowing nails.

God, you still are so in love with her; it's been long now, and it's pathetic.

And then, you hear it.

"_Laura!"_

It's small; you could miss it, you could ignore it in the pouring silver rain. That voice, that voice has been haunting your every waking moment, following you into your dreams, screaming in your broken heart.

Instead, you turn.

You see her.

She is stumbling forward in the rain, the droplets streaking down her face, and her lip is quavering dangerously close to tears. Lightning turns her white for a heartbeat, like an angel.

Her face is so full of sorrow, all like she never left, and her hands are shaking and you might laugh at a different time if you saw the uncertainty in her eyes, and then the lines on her face. Her eyes flicker up just as your legs are swinging over the bench, like a string connecting you, because it never broke.

It never broke, because—

You never let go. You never would let go of Carmilla, not even when every last light had faded to black.

You don't realize you're crying until salt touches your tongue and your sight blurs dangerously.

"Carmilla_ fucking_ Karnstein," You choke out. "Do you have_ any idea _how much I've been through because of you?"

She at least has the decency to look shamed, and then she's sobbing out a "Laura—"

You cross the too large space in an instant. It feels like forever, like a thousand lifetimes since you last saw her, felt her, held her. Her eyes are so uncertain, so fragile, and she breathes in sharply as you stare at her, and her eyes lock onto you. She is the sky.

And you are taking her face in your hands, seeing her, before she grasps at you and pulls your face clumsily against hers and then you're kissing her hard and hungrily, and she fills everything that shattered around you and the world ebbs out of focus as she gasps under you and then holds you tight, tight, tight.

And then, she pulls away first.

She looks down at her chest in disbelief, and her ribs are heaving up and down, and you realize—

She's breathing.

"Carmilla?" You whisper in disbelief. "What— what the _hell?" _

She looks up at you, and her eyes are so wide, and then she says, "Well— it's a long story, creampuff— but I'm kind of— I think I'm human now?"


	2. II

She comes back with you to the dorm. You are silent as she hovers behind you. This is a hollow emptiness she brought on. You won't break it; because she is still not yours, and your memories are drowning you in yesterday, rampaging through your mind.

"You look different," she says finally, and anger lashes out in your heart.

"Maybe the all of nights laying awake and staring at your bed and skipping out on class, and not having the heart to take care of myself had something to do with it," you say acidly, coldness tinging your tone. Her eyes darken and she flinches.

"Nothing I say will help, will it?" She murmurs, and her voice is a little sad, and after all this— you still love her, and you can't stop loving her, no matter what.

"You broke my heart and ran and hid like a coward," you say sadly. "How would that ever have helped me? How could I ever be okay after that? How could you ever think I could ever forget you?"

"I was scared," she mumbles, "I didn't want to lose you, and I thought—"

"Better to destroy me after several happy years than to lose you with no love at all." You shake your head, and she looks so broken: you cannot be angry, you cannot shake the cloud hanging over your head.

"Could you ever forgive me?" Her voice is desolate, hesitating, like she's not even sure she should ask.

"I love you too much," you say carefully, "and leaving…" Tears come suddenly, unbidden, and she moves forward as if you hold you: you hold up a hand, warning her back. "It was so hard," you choke out, "I couldn't bear being without you."

"But—it was for your own good."

You jab a finger in her chest, and she stumbles backward, looking surprised: she is not strong anymore, and her heartbeat is loud and wild under your touch. Her eyes are a lighter shade of brown; her face looks older, her face sags a little; there is no immortality engrained in her flesh any longer.

It's been ripped out, replaced with the blood of you and your kin for decades back.

"How _dare _you," you snarl out in a raw, hurt voice. "How dare you decide what's good for me. You are the only one I will ever choose!"

Her eyes fill with shame and you whip around, and sobs are choking you: one after the other, and you don't move when you feel her hesitating hand between your shoulder blades.

"Laura," she says softly. "Laura, look at me."

You shake your head and so she comes in front of you instead; her eyes are so sad, so angry with herself, and her hands are warm on your arm. It's the little things: heartbeat, warmth, breath, and all: she is not the same.

Nor are you.

She kisses you hard, raw, rough and untamed; it's full of fire and a ferocity that shocks you, regret and sorrow and wild grief mingled in like rain as she tangles her hand in your hair and holds you so close: you can feel her new heartbeat, quick and wild and loud. She tastes— different, lacking the cold taste of iron and night and stars.

She tastes human.

/ / /

It takes time. Days. Weeks. Months, even.

She's really not equipped to her weaker form, the mortality, slowness: how she has to take care of herself now, how her recklessness endangers her. You have to wipe the cuts on her skin, kiss her bruises, quietly apply sterilizer and peroxide.

She tells you that she went and dug up the Blade of Hastur. She researched an ancient ritual, and prepared for weeks, then she drove it into her chest and when she woke, she was breathing, and her heartbeat was thundering loud in her ears. She has a broad silver scar on her chest now, raised and jagged.

She stumbles in, drunk, some nights; smelling of whiskey and the night and pine-needles, and she sobs into your neck and slumps against you, whispering broken pleas against your skin, and her body is mortal: three centuries old, with thousands of memories and millions of demons, and you learn some people are broken.

And, with dealing with you, she's withdrawn sometimes, but she always apologizes first; she never forgets how she almost let you go— almost lost you.

You heal. You forgive her. Because what is love, if not forgiveness?

Sometimes, you remember, sometimes, you collapse under a scaffold of darkness: she is always there to catch you with her weaker arms, supple and mortal, and you remember healing is possible. You have time now: she is not ageless, and she is yours. You will not lose her to the golden wings of time.

She takes pleasure in the little things: she finds out herself. She finds the girl she would have been if she hadn't been stolen from life and flung into night. Mortality, she says, is a gift that most take for granted.

She likes pizza, but not hamburgers; she will drink water, but milk repulses her, and she kisses you more than anything, and you grow in her light, flourishing together in a way you didn't think possible. You grow together; you change together, and she is surprised at changes most of all.

She wakes screaming in the night, sometimes, remembering: whimpering _coffins and blood and Maman, _and you hold her until all her tears have dried and she sleeps with a quiet sigh.

/ / /

You guide her home; you bring her to light, and you breathe back the emptiness that has been filled: she is there, and she is _yours. _

/ / /

She meets you on your way back from your classes one day, and it's raining softly: the gentlest silver misting over the hills, and you're hurrying because getting wet is absolutely _not _a viable option: you have LaF's laptop and they'd kill you if you water-damaged it.

She slouches a bit more now, and her walk lacks some of the supernatural finesse, but really: she hasn't changed all that much, and that's probably better.

"Hey, baby," you say as she approaches you, "we've got to get back to the dorm, LaF will kill me if I keep their laptop in the rain— and why are you out here?"

She gestures to her face. She still hasn't stopped wearing her eyeliner; if anything, she wears more since her argument of, "My skin will age and decay now, anyway, cutie" was spat out.

"It's started," she says softly, and your heartbeat increases in apprehension. _What? What has started? _

"It's just, I didn't believe I could age, and— I'm growing, I think, I didn't believe it." Her voice is soft and silver. "It feels… new. Not bad, but strange." She points to the thinnest— it's barely noticeable, honestly— furrow by her eye, the smallest wrinkle, but in that moment, it is everything.

You laugh incredulously, because it hits you at that moment: you aren't going to lose her to time, you can _have _her, and she's not going to leave, and you kiss her in the rain, the laptop forgotten.

She kisses you back.

(LaF will forgive you anyway.)

/ / /

You still get a swooping feeling in your stomach every time she tells you she loves you, every time she looks at you like you're something holy and sacred, every time you two are one.

Maybe it's possible to fall in love more every day. You're proving it now. You learn the difference between _loving _and being _in love; _because your hearts are one; you know you are in love with her, and she's in love with you.

You both grow, and change, and it's so beautiful: you forgive her, you forget the past.

/ / /

You celebrate her first nineteenth birthday simply. You stay in your dorm, just you and her, with lighted candles and dimmed lights. Her hair is rimed in starlight, silver and lustrous; technically she would be 336 years old, but you're taking it back to the start. That's what she would want, after all; the facade of normalcy is all too simple for her. She's been shrouded in darkness for so long.

She asks you for no gifts, and when you ask her why, she kisses you once and looks in your eyes and says, "I have what I want most in this world, Laura."

You didn't ever think you would love anyone this much, but she's surpassed everything you have ever believed is true thus far.

She dances with you; instead of sleeping on the floor, she shares the bed with you, and she is so warm. She's so human, and you lay your head over her chest to hear her heartbeat, to let it lull you into sleep.

And just as you're drifting off, she puts her lips next to your ears, and murmurs: "I have never loved anyone as much as I love you. You have given me everything."

You pull her just a little closer before dozing off, and you can _feel_ the loving smile that plays across her lips.

It's mirrored in your heart.

/ / /

When it comes time to leave Silas— for the "real world," as LaF had always quipped in their wry manner— you are are 23, and so is she. She's softened around the edges, lost her hardness. Sometimes she lashes out, sometimes she relapses into leaving in the night and coming back drunk, but it's rare, and each time is fewer and farther in between.

Perry and LaF are heading off to Germany, and Danny is heading to Canada with Kirsch, and you spin your desk chair to her one day. You're at your father's while you figure out where you're going to go, and she looks back at you, and you smile.

"We have a whole lifetime together," you say, "How do you want to spend it?"

She smiles back, and there are no fangs in this: it's soft and genuine. "To be with you is all I'll ever want. It doesn't matter where I am, as long as it is with you."

You're about to answer when the door bursts open and Carmilla rolls her eyes, because the whole people-bursting-in-on-you has been a recurring punchline— luckily, you locked it when you two did… things— and your dad pokes his head through.

"I listened to your conversation," he says, and Carmilla looks positively fuming. "And— well— I'd very much appreciate if you'd stay in Austria so I can keep an eye on you."

"Daddy's little girl," Carmilla mutters under her breath, and you roll your eyes now, because, really, she hasn't changed a bit.

"Dad," you say patiently, "we're going to see where life takes us. You'll be okay without me."

"But I won't be able to check up on you!" He says desperately.

"You couldn't check up on me in college, you were fine then," you remind him, and he shakes his head.

"The videos," he says. "By the way, sweetie, you did some things on camera I really—"

"Ooookay!" you cry, and Carmilla is muffling her snickers now, and you glare at her before swinging around. "Goodbye, Dad."

/ / /

It's a spring evening one day when you're both twenty six. You'd just attended Perry and LaFontaine's marriage earlier in the year. Everyone always knew they'd had a connection ever since they were little kids, and you are so happy for them, in every sense of the word. They are one, and no one was surprised how they bashfully accepted everyone at the wedding, the depth of the love shining in their eyes as they looked at each other.

You're meandering along a park pathway, the moonlight turning Carmilla's hair to a bright, angelic silver: she's still as beautiful, and you love her more than you ever have. Its depth is infinite, the vastness stretching for thousands of miles.

She stops, suddenly, and gently holds out a hand to stop you. You halt, confused, and she bites her lip— staring at you, and her eyes are so warm.

Your breath catches in your throat and your heart beats out a wild rhythm as she kneels, her eyes never leaving yours, and pulls out a small black box.

Your heart is slamming a single word in your chest: her name, and you know her across a thousand unlit seas, through worlds and galaxies, you love her.

"Laura," she says. Her voice is silver and reminds you of night rivers sliding past in a starlit forest, moon glimmering off its rippled surface. She opens the box, and a little, spun gold ring is inside; a small white moonstone is set in the center. "I have been lost for so many years," she says softly, "but you helped me find myself. You brought me back." Her eyes are rimmed with starlight and tears. "I love you more than life itself. I love you more than anything; I would wait forever just to see your face once more, and God— I could never say enough— but… will you spend the rest of your life with me?"

"Yes," you breathe out, and then louder, a squeal, almost, "Yes— yes, yes!"

/ / /

You get married a few months later, in Austria. The ceremony is small and quiet, in a little forest with yellow rose twining over a little gazebo. Sunlight is dappling golden patterns over the emerald grass. Perry, LaF, Kirsch, Danny, your dad, some of your relatives— they all attend, but you only have eyes for Carmilla. The sun is a golden disc cresting the white, feathered clouds, the sapphire in the sky.

The forest breathes new life.

You skip out the traditional vows, because no words could encompass how much you feel when you are near her.

She kisses you soft and slow and long, and you can taste your future, all the happiest memories on her lips, and you've never been more confident in anything but her. LaFontaine tells you it was about time at the reception, and Perry shushes them, and you look at your ring, their rings, the small silver band on Carmilla's hand; she's gazing at you like you're the only thing that exists in the room.

You think that this is what _family _and _love _means.

You can hear the soft tenor of _A Thousand Years _drifting across the air, and you leave Perry and LaFontaine to dance, and she never lets you go, all night. She twirls you, she kisses you, she whispers all the things she was too scared to say into your hair, and you can see your dad beaming with pride, Perry and LaFontaine dancing too, their eyes shining with a luminosity you now see in Carmilla's eyes.

You recognize it as never ending, undying, unconditional love.

/ / /

Your honeymoon is possibly even more wonderful; she takes you to Paris, and, well— it's the City of Love, all things considered, so you take that to the fullest advantage.

/ / /

She holds you at your dad's funeral when you cry, you twine your hand with hers and tell her he's with your mother now. They're both, surely, smiling down on you with the warmest of wishes.

Danny and Kirsch end up together, too; when Danny sends you an e-mail, Carmilla scoffs loudly before bursting into rough laughter. "Fido _and _Big Red? That'll be a kick, let me respond."

Danny replies to Carmilla's sarcastic jibes with a _'you got married to Laura, Morticia Addams— don't hear me complaining, do you?'_

And you both laugh. Maybe time does heal all wounds.

You grow old together, and her face changes; so does yours. You get gray hairs, and new lines on your face, and pains and scars and bruises, but hey— it's a reminder. You are both mortal. You buy houses, you go through years, you make memories and you make up after arguments, but she never lets you slip through her fingers like she did so many years ago. She does not give up. Through every petty argument, every night she sleeps on the couch, she always comes to you in the morning and apologizes first.

/ / /

The day comes, inevitably.

She looks at you one day, calmly, and she says: "Laura, we need to go to the doctor."

You stiffen, and your heart is stopped; your whole body is still in time, and you are drowning in her brown, brown eyes.

"Why?"

She looks away. "I don't feel… right."

And though you always knew this day would come, it still feels like you've been sucker punched in the chest.

/ / /

The doctor's diagnosis is simple: malignant blood cancer. She has way too much iron in her bloodstream, and though you both know why, you don't tell him that.

/ / /

And then, you only have months, but somehow— it doesn't hurt as much. She spends every last day with you, doing the things you never did, trying to forget the sadness in her every word, the slower way she moves, the way she flinches sometimes as if her very bones ache. You touch her hair— still beautiful, rimed with gray that threads through the lustrous brown and black, and her eyes are more tired. You never forget to ever say 'I love you' to her, and she never forgets to touch you, to hold you, to look at you with such infinite tenderness in her eyes.

And then, one day on your visit to the clinic, the doctor comes out of the room and says very solemnly: "She has only days— it's taken root in near her heart, and it's been living in her bone marrow for a while now," and her eyes are so aged when you walk in, crying.

"Cupcake, I love you so much," she whispers into your ear, but you cannot stifle the way your body trembles, and how she holds you so tightly, like she's afraid to let go.

/ / /

She dies in your arms, of course, and her last words are ones of love and promise; the last thing she sees is you. The last thing to touch her skin— oh _God, _because it's getting colder now— are your tears; streaming down, and your choked pleas, but she does not come back.

You remember that she was always the first to leave, but this time— nor the first— she never wanted to leave you.

You kiss her forehead, but you feel her absence like a knife in your heart, icy and cold. She isn't there, and her eyes don't sparkle with that teasing twinkle, nor with infinite love and gentleness: they are cold, glazed, _gone _and empty.

/ / /

They tip-toe around you at the funeral. Perry and LaF, Danny and Kirsch: they avoid you, respectfully paying their wishes, but you're numb. Staring at your feet, you think you've gone deaf, blind, senseless— tossed into a raging storm with nothing to hold on to. You keep looking up, expecting to see her loving eyes, her sharp smirk, but she is not there, and you suck in a sharp breath before crying all over again.

Then, later, you start to feel a deep ache in your bones. You write it off to old age— you're nearing your seventies now— but then it gets sharper, little twinges stabbing you nonstop, and you resign to go to the doctor.

When the words 'fatal' fall from her mouth, you don't feel as sad as you think you should. You've always believed in a beyond, and if anyone is there, it's Carmilla.

(Your friends will grieve, but they, too, will be okay.)

/ / /

And then, one morning, you're simply not there.

You wake to a blinding light— sparking, brilliant, glimmering, and a single figure emerges: her eyes full of light and coy laughter, her face blazing with beautiful light, joy written all over her features. The sad, tired lines that you'd traced, memorized, are gone, and she holds out her hand.

"Carmilla?" you breathe, and her voice is laughter like the wind brushing through spring trees.

"Who else, cutie?" Her eyes are shining with lovely radiance, and you take her hand, and she looks once at you and smiles a smile full of more love than you could ever understand. "We've got forever to be together now," she says in a voice rich with something— some higher thing you don't understand— it reminds you of golden sun on a wild-flower moor, of ringing silver bells. "And even we have nights."

You look back. In the fade, you can see your old life. You can see the musty house, the green trees, the sadness, the mortality of it all. You can see the sprawling moors and wild wind and the beauty of the sapphire sky and the clouds scudding overhead.

It's bleached in comparison to Carmilla.

You don't want that anymore. You don't want to be without her for another second.

And then, you step forward, you look into her eyes like miniature worlds. You clasp her hand, and she twines her fingers with yours, and you step forward into forever.


End file.
